As an alternative to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) systems, cellular phone networks have proliferated over the last decades, where users with cellular phones have access to one or more networks at almost any location. Also a recent development is the wide spread use of Voice over IP (VOIP) telephony, which uses internet protocol (IP) over wired and wireless networks. With the availability of such diverse types of communication networks and devices capable of taking advantage of various features of these networks, enhanced communication systems bring different communication networks together providing until now unavailable functionality such as combining various modes of communication (e.g. instant messaging, voice calls, video communications, etc.). This technology is also referred to as unified communications (UC). A network of servers manages end devices capable of handling a wide range of functionality and communication while facilitating communications between the more modern unified communication network devices and other networks (e.g. PSTN, cellular, etc.).
Diagnostics and error detection are one of the major components of a multimodal communication system such as a UC system. Especially in an environment serving large numbers of users, such systems are in continuous use facilitating a wide variety of communication types and sessions. Failures at different levels may degrade user experience and impair operations in businesses and other organizations employing these systems. Thus, proactive error detection and repair are part of the design goals for enhanced communication systems. In detecting errors and diagnosing problems, however, some of the inherent characteristics of such systems may work against obtaining meaningful data. For example, usage (e.g., number of sessions, exchanged data, etc.) may vary depending on modality skewing the results if diagnostic data is compared equally among different modalities. Similarly, diagnostic data may also be skewed by traffic patterns of different modalities or users with different usage patterns.